Violent Mother Rat

Baby rats were 3 weeks old. Mother rat had food and water aplenty. I heard some squeaking and looked over. The mother rat had the baby pinned to the floor by the neck, I opened it up and pushed her off him, she had bit into his neck and he twitched and died.

She has 11 other babies, all healthy, not sure what provoked this, I was close to smashing her head into the floor, but I didn't know what had caused it, and she still needs to take care of her other babies. I counted them, 1 more strike and she is snake food.

Thoughts?

It's not uncommon ... I see it most often with young or first time moms ... sometimes they chew up the entire litter for no reason ... give her another shot, in my experience she'll do better next time.

It's the circle of life. ;)

-adam

Yeah Ive seen it in mothers with younger babies, and mothers who were stressed, but this was the first time I saw one do it randomly out of the blue, with no factors I could attribute it to.

If she does in another I will just put her back in the population and feed off the babies, they are almost ready to go.

we need to remember... just because we don't understand why they are doing what they are doing doesn't make it wrong.

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Originally Posted by recycling goddess

we need to remember... just because we don't understand why they are doing what they are doing doesn't make it wrong.

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I agree, hence this post, but I'm open to some suggestions :)

I have also seen that behavior in dogs. Stress can cause it, but also they can pick up on something wrong health wise that we can't always see. I've had pups attacked or pushed off by mom only to find out later that they had a very serious medical condition. Animals do cull their own.

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Originally Posted by SnakeySnakeSnake

I agree, hence this post, but I'm open to some suggestions :)

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sorry, i thought adam had already done that. ;) :colbert2:

don't kill the mom - allow her to breed again and see how she does the next time. ya, you can get a mom who doesn't want to be a mom... but perhaps giving her a female friend to help out with the litter next time will help to give her a little break.

i always keep my females in groups so they can help each other out. :tricho: it can be stressful with all these babies wanting you ALL THE TIME :(

hope that helps ya :gj:

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Originally Posted by recycling goddess

we need to remember... just because we don't understand why they are doing what they are doing doesn't make it wrong.

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Sorry I meant I am open to reasons why they would do it that would make sense. Ie them noticing it was sick, or that it might grow up to be the next hitler, etc :)

I am aware it could just be random/stress and will give her another shot. I was just hoping there was an identifiable reason so it could be avoided in the future =.

i believe they have a 'sense' that we don't. they may know the baby isn't healthy... and so they kill it.

but... i also believe, given the age of the pups... that she was stressed out... and that's why i suggest giving her a friend to help (not a male who'll just get her pregnant again) but a female to wetnurse the pups with her.

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Originally Posted by SnakeySnakeSnake

I was just hoping there was an identifiable reason so it could be avoided in the future =.

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It's going to be unavoidable. Working with animals ... that's just the way it goes. As much as we may try to understand them, they just don't fit into a little "mold" that makes sense to us. They do their own thing ... just roll with it. ;)

-adam

Perhaps considering this is a female with 12 (now 11) 3 week old pups she may have felt it getting a bit crowded and culled out one of her weaker young. As has been said, who knows really. The more rats you have the more you are going to see some abherrent, unexplainable in human terms behaviours. I'd re-breed her and see how it goes.

i witnessed one of my breeders eating one of her babies (caught her when she was almost finished) and at first i was a bit bothered, but i realized that she did it for a reason. she is a good mother and i re-bred her and she did fine. as for keeping females with young in groups--if you decide to try it keep a close eye on them. i tried it with my last 2 litters--2 moms had their litters within a few days of eachother. there was a lot of baby stealing from nest to nest and after a few days a couple of babies ended up with some scrapes, one of which was pretty deep, and the less dominating female started to seem stressed. i separated them and split up the babies and everyone did much better and the scraped babies healed up nicely. sooo, just watch those mommies if you decide to go that route.

I also recently experimented like Emily with communal mothering. I took two of my females that get along very well and did keep them seperate until their offspring were at the fuzzy stage to avoid damage to the pinks. When I put them together it did go okay except the one poor female ended up doing the vast majority of the nursing while her lazy sister rat lay around pretty much ignoring the babies. Couple of days of that and I split them back up. Miss Lazy Pants rattie had to get back on the job then LOL

Be glad it was just one baby. Last night I figured out something was wrong with my rex line. After about 2 hrs of staring, reading notes, and thinking I figured it out. I was missing a whole bunch of pups out of one enclosure. Dug around changed the bedding and found 8 pups dead and buried. I pulled a half eaten one away from a female that was about to pop. None of the others had been eaten.

It comes down to that female. I had problems on her last litter (she was one of those freaky females that grabs a baby and tries to stuff it anywhere it can at every noise), her entire last litter was frozen ... this one will be too, and her shortly after.

The babies that were fostered were put with females on their second litters ... so not great moms yet ... and all but 1 were alive this morning (the one that died was in really rough shape when I moved it). This would imply to me that there was nothing wrong with that litter she killed. There was ample room before she started killing. The only real factor that changed was the weather changed from bright and sunny to raining for 3 days (still raining).

Maybe she has that SAD disorder.

Bryan

bryan,

i'm so sorry for those pups. :( i wonder if critters get post partum depression? i know that when i had it after my first baby... your thought process really does get confused. perhaps that's what happened to her.

Female rats can be wierd things. I have one, named Flash, that I've had since she was just a weanling herself. She's got 11 lovely fuzzies right now (her second successful litter). She's a decent mother to them but everytime I go to refresh her water or food she dives and burrows herself under her bedding. Yes apparently I am the DEBIL WOMAN lol. Nice mother though...dives for cover...totally leaves her helpless babies for the debil woman to get...geesh! You think that rat would have figured out by now that I'm just giving her nice stuff but she's a wierdo! Got her name because she always disliked me and would wiggle away in a...you got it...flash! LOL

my good friends little brother had a gerbil. It had a baby who was only born with 3 legs. it ended chewing off the three remaining legs.
what it means i dunno.

I thought about breeding my girl Fat Ma. she is a beige rexy! but....I dont want to uncover stuff like this so I just buy em each week.

Better luck next time.
Soon she'll be on like her 3rd litter, layin in the corner all spread out used to her kids attaching to her mommy knobs for milk...making noise, messin up the cage.

Good luck 2nd time around!

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Originally Posted by 4Khan

my good friends little brother had a gerbil. It had a baby who was only born with 3 legs. it ended chewing off the three remaining legs.
what it means i dunno.

I thought about breeding my girl Fat Ma. she is a beige rexy! but....I dont want to uncover stuff like this so I just buy em each week.

Better luck next time.
Soon she'll be on like her 3rd litter, layin in the corner all spread out used to her kids attaching to her mommy knobs for milk...making noise, messin up the cage.

Good luck 2nd time around!

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"mommy knobs" :rofl: